Extract text from multimedia files (SMIL)
To convert SMIL files to another format, you need RealPlayer or other Video software.
To convert other file formats to the "Multimedia Presentation" file type, you need software like RealPlayer or a similar tool.
A .SMIL file is a Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language presentation file. It was developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to coordinate multimedia elements like video, audio, and text on a single timeline. It is also heavily used by the DAISY Consortium to structure digital talking books for visually impaired users. Software like RealPlayer and JW Player rely on this format to display interactive video presentations. You can learn more about the standard on Wikipedia.
Users often struggle with .SMIL files because they mistake them for actual video or audio files. A .SMIL file is strictly an XML-based text file. It does not contain any media data. Instead, it contains text links (URLs or file paths) pointing to external MP4, MP3, or streaming servers. If the referenced server is offline or the local files are missing, the presentation breaks completely.
Because there is no media inside, standard online video converters fail to process .SMIL files into video formats. You cannot simply convert a .SMIL file to MP4 or AVI. The best workaround is to convert the file to TXT or XML to expose the raw code. Once opened as text, you can copy the hidden URLs and manually download the actual media files.
Standard media converters will reject this format. Since our analysis detects the underlying XML and UTF-8 format, you can safely read the source code in your browser and recover the hidden media links without installing specialized software.
Convert.Guru analyzes your SMIL file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted ZIP, SMI, SMRL, PDF, TXT, SML, JPG, NCX, MIL, JPEG, HTML, PNG and SVG files.
If you want to convert SMIL file to MP4, AVI, MOV, WMV, FLV, WEBM, MKV, M4V, 3GP, OGV, ASF or RM, you can use RealPlayer or similar software from the "Multimedia Synchronization and Playlists" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert MTS, MOV, RMVB, DIVX, RM, H264, TS, WMV, VOB, MP4, XVID or AVI files to SMIL, try RealPlayer or another comparable tool in the "Multimedia Synchronization and Playlists" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our SMIL converter.